The Wi-Fi Alliance has upgraded the look of its seal of certification, dropping the radio frequency check box in favor of showing off whether a product supports 802.11a, b, or g,

The Alliance, the industry consortium behind the certification of wireless LAN products for interoperability, requires companies that have passed its interoperability testing to use the "Wi-Fi Certified" seal on packaging.

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The most recent version of the seal featured check boxes that marked a product as either 2.4GHz (the radio frequency used by 802.11b and 11g) or 5GHz (for 802.11a products). The new seal does away with that, because of the confusion it held for consumers. Going forward, the seal is color-coded with large ovals that contain the letters a, b, and/or g as appropriate. The oval for 11a is orange, the 11b is blue, and 11g is green.

Frank Hanzlik, the Alliance's managing director, said in the announcement that "the new logo is specifically designed for consumers selecting a product in retail stores."

In addition, newly certified products will now carry an Interoperability Certificate, usually inside the box. It will spell out all the features and capabilities of the product, such as whether it supports Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), personal or enterprise versions. WPA support was also previously listed on the on the outside of the box, in the Certification seal.

The Alliance keeps a listing of certified products on its own Web site at www.wi-fi.org/certified_products. To date they have certified 1250 products for interoperability.

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